International Journal of Communication 12(2018), Feature 893–908 1932–8036/2018FEA0002

Distributed Creativity on the Internet:

A Theoretical Foundation for Online Creative Participation

IOANA LITERAT
Teachers College, Columbia University, USA

VLAD PETRE GLĂVEANU

Webster University Geneva, Switzerland

Starting from the premise that a deeper understanding of creativity as a

sociopsychological process is a valuable foundation for analyzing contemporary practices
of online creative participation, this article aims to forge a much-needed link between
creativity research and online participation. Applying the lens of distributed creativity
and integrating literature from across disciplines, we examine the distributed nature of
online creativity along three key dimensions: social, material, and temporal. By
analyzing online creative participation along these interrelated dimensions, a more
nuanced and complex portrait of online creativity emerges—one that is sensitive to both
sociocultural and technological influences, as well as to the way these factors intersect in
online spaces. We theorize that, while all creativity is distributed, online creativity is
paradigmatic in this regard; therefore, studying it in this light allows us to achieve a
richer understanding of not only online creative dynamics, but also of creative action as
a whole.

Keywords: creativity, online participation, new media, user-generated content

With the growth and diversification of online participatory platforms, recent years have seen a
significant proliferation of creative activity in online spaces. Indicators of this digital creativity boom
include the rise of new forms of creative expression (Milner, 2016; Shifman, 2014), the cultural
prominence of remixes and mashups (Sinnreich, 2010; Sonvilla-Weiss, 2010), and the success of creative
crowdsourcing platforms (Brabham, 2010, 2013), among many others. Furthermore, beyond these
vernacular expressions of digital creativity, professional artists are increasingly turning to the Internet as a
locus for creative action and collaboration (Cornell & Halter, 2015; Literat, 2012; Tribe, Jana, & Grosenick,
2006), using it as a platform to create new media art and facilitate online artistic collaborations.

Jenkins (2006a) identifies three major trends that explain the participatory ethos of
contemporary media cultures: the emergence of new technological tools that facilitate participatory
activities, the increasing prominence of DIY approaches to media production, and an economic

Copyright © 2018 (Ioana Literat, literat@tc.columbia.edu; Vlad Petre Glaveanu, glaveanu@webster.ch).

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at
http://ijoc.org.
894 Ioana Literat and Vlad Petre Glaveanu International Journal of Communication 12(2018)

environment encouraging the production and circulation of media across platforms. In digital spaces, the
previously disparate categories of producer and consumer are merging in complex ways to form a whole
new kind of cultural participant: the “produser” (Bruns, 2008). At the same time (and beyond individual
creative participation), the collective dimension of these Internet-based practices is essential, as online
creative platforms can facilitate the emergence of participatory cultures around shared interests and
common creative pursuits (Ito et al., forthcoming; Jenkins et al., 2006).

This article starts from the premise that the study of creativity, and particularly distributed or
sociocultural models of creativity, is vital for understanding online creative participation, and vice versa.
Yet the link between the two is insufficiently explored, and—with a few significant exceptions, such as the
body of research on computer-mediated brainstorming (e.g., Kerr & Murthy, 2004; Ziegler, Diehl, &
Zijlstra, 2000) or group creativity in online settings (e.g., Aragon et al., 2009; Michinov & Primois,
2005)—there are few links between the literature on offline creativity and the literature on online
participation. The current article aims to address this lack by forging a valuable connection between these
two areas of study. As researchers positioned in separate but interrelated fields, we each bring our
respective expertise in these different domains—online creative participation (e.g., Literat, 2012, 2016,
2017) and creativity research (e.g., Glăveanu, 2010, 2011, 2014)—with the goal of forging a symbiotic
interdisciplinary collaboration.

The aim of this article is to theorize online creativity, suggesting a potential framework for
understanding how creative processes might be different—or not—in online environments. Creativity is
typically defined in psychology as the process leading to the emergence of new, original, and meaningful
artifacts (see Runco & Jaeger, 2012). By examining the lines along which creative processes are
distributed in both traditional and mediated contexts, we aim to identify the particularities of creative
activity in the online environment. In a previous collaboration (Literat & Glăveanu, 2016), we posed five
questions—who, where, when, how, and why—in regard to the specific example of crowdsourced art,
attempting to parse what is different when comparing participatory art in online versus offline contexts.
However, our aim here is broader and primarily theoretical in nature. Specifically, by drawing from
multiple bodies of literature and applying the concept of distributed creativity to online participation, we
examine the distribution of online creativity across three key dimensions: social, material, and temporal.
In doing so, we aim to identify and analyze the new kinds of behaviors, processes, and collaborations that
the Internet has made possible, as well as some of the main challenges that are specific to Internet-based
creative participation. We do not discuss one particular case study in depth; rather, by integrating multiple
bodies of research and cross-disciplinary examples, we hope that this article can pave the way for future
investigations of online creativity across domains of activity and provide researchers—across areas of
inquiry—with a valuable toolkit to analyze these sociocultural processes in all their complexity.

Distributed Creativity and New Media Technologies

Before engaging in an analysis of the particularities of online creativity, it is useful to reflect on

why digital media and communication researchers (with some notable exceptions; see Negus & Pickering,
2004) have rarely engaged with creativity theories—a growing field of research, particularly in psychology
(Kaufman & Sternberg, 2010). While the terms “creative” and “creativity” are often used, their meaning is
International Journal of Communication 12(2018) Distributed Creativity on the Internet 895

usually taken for granted and there is rarely a theoretical model of creativity underpinning digital media
studies in this area. The main reason for this, we believe, rests in the fact that creativity has been
conceptualized historically as an individual, psychological function that has little to do with social relations
or material, technological engagement (Glăveanu, 2010, 2014). While other people and existing tools or
technologies are considered to play a part in shaping an individual’s creative expression, they are usually
seen as “intervening” from the outside rather than being integral to the creative process.

However, there is another approach to creativity studies within the field of psychology: one that
recognizes it as a systemic, distributed phenomenon taking place at the intersection between creators,
their audiences, and cultural artifacts (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Glăveanu, 2011; Moran & John-Steiner,
2003). This perspective understands creative thinking in terms of interaction and promotes a distributed
view of creativity as a process taking place between people, or between people and objects, and across
time (Glăveanu, 2014; Sawyer & Dezutter, 2009). According to this perspective, all creativity is essentially
distributed or collaborative, even when enacted by individuals working alone. This is because people
create based on the ideas of others, working with tools made by others, and, most of all, addressing a
variety of audiences as part of their creative work. Distributed creativity is thus a new, emerging paradigm
that challenges individualistic perspectives and postulates creativity as a social, dialogical, and cultural
process.

In essence, the notion of distributed creativity makes us pay particular attention to context
(social and material) and the way this context participates in creative action. Contextual elements do not
only facilitate or give meaning to creativity, but become part of it. Think, for example, about the multiple
networks creators belong to, or the numerous tools and technologies they use to create; these are not
external to the act of creating but effectively (co)constitute creative action. Distributed creativity considers
the social and material context as part and parcel of creative processes and, consequently, any substantial
change in the relation between creators and their audiences and tools is bound to change the way
creativity is performed, as well as its outcomes.

One of the biggest transformations in the way we relate to our world is undoubtedly represented
by the rapid penetration of new media technologies in all aspects of everyday life. The significant effects of
these processes on creativity are materialized in new types of creative products and mediums of creative
expression (e.g., Milner, 2016; Tribe, Jana, & Grosenick, 2006), as well as in shifting relations among
creators and between creators and audiences (e.g., Feng & Literat, 2017; Jenkins, 2006b; Jenkins, Ford,
& Greene, 2013). Our interest here is in explicating the ways in which theories of distributed creativity
might help us achieve a deeper understanding of these mediated processes in all their complexity.

Creative action is distributed along a social, material, and temporal line (for a similar argument
about cognition, see Hutchins, 2000). This means that creative processes take place not inside isolated
minds (although individual cognition certainly plays a key part) but rather in between people, objects, and
across time. In effect, the theory of distributed creativity considers this phenomenon in terms of
interactions, communication, and co-creation (see Glăveanu, 2014). The social distribution of creativity
points us to the system of bidirectional relations between creators and their audiences, in which ideas and
perspectives are exchanged and differences are turned into resources for creative expression. The
896 Ioana Literat and Vlad Petre Glaveanu International Journal of Communication 12(2018)

material line of distribution concerns ongoing interactions with objects, tools, and settings and the use and
transformation of their affordances (or action potentials) for creative purposes. Last but not least, both
the social and material dimensions of this phenomenon need to be understood as evolving. Along a
temporal line, the timescale of creative action ranges from microgenetic (i.e., the moment-to-moment
interactions and exchanges that constitute, for example, the practice of online creativity), to ontogenetic
(i.e., the life-course changes that shape the way people participate in creative action) and sociogenetic
(i.e., the macrolevel evolution of society and technology, which offers a greater, dynamic frame for the
other two temporal lines). These temporalities are, of course, intertwined, and a developmental
perspective on creative action needs to account for each one of these levels and the ways in which they
are embedded within each other.

In what follows, we apply this framework of distributed creativity to online creative action.
Unpacking the processes of online creativity using this model is highly suitable within this context, as
online spaces involve the interactions of multiple users and audiences, make use of sociocultural and
technological affordances, and unfold within specific micro-, meso-, and macrolevel timeframes that are all
relevant for understanding online creative participation. We present these arguments in a schematic form
in Table 1, and discuss them, in turn, below.

The Social Distribution of Online Creativity

Creativity is a fundamentally collaborative process (Barron, 1999), even when the collaborations
that lead to the emergence of the new are less visible or explicit. As Google Scholar reminds us, using a
popular expression, we are all standing on the shoulders of giants; this means not only that we use
existing knowledge, but that we are constantly in dialogue with it, and with the ideas of others—the
multiple audiences we address through our creative activity. Creativity is a dialogical process (Ness &
Glăveanu, forthcoming) in the sense that it always relates—combines, differentiates, and ultimately
integrates—different voices or perspectives. Even when creating seemingly alone, we are not in an asocial
state because we still engage with the views of (absent) others.

Although all creative action—online and offline—is, as described above, social or dialogical in
nature, online environments take this element of sociality to a new level. Online creativity is
fundamentally networked, with the audience—actual or projected (Brake, 2012), active or passive
(Campbell et al., 2016) —playing a crucial role in terms of fueling and sustaining creative action (see, for
instance, Brabham, 2010; Danet, 2012; Stern, 2008; van Dijk, 2014). In this sense, as both theoretical
and empirical research has shown, digital creative practices function as both creativity and
communication; they fulfill both aesthetic and communicative functions, which are quintessentially
intertwined (Danet, 2012; van Dijk, 2014). However, as Brake (2012) suggests, the relationship between
online content creators and their audiences is complicated and resists generalization; he also notes that
the existing literature in this area often suggests contradictory conclusions, and content creators
themselves point to a range of shifting relationships with—and imaginings of—their audiences. Claiming
that creativity is fundamentally a social process doesn’t mean romanticizing social interaction; indeed,
research conducted both online and offline shows that working in groups can be detrimental for creative
achievement (see Paulus & Nijstad, 2003). The distributed understanding of online creativity simply makes
International Journal of Communication 12(2018) Distributed Creativity on the Internet 897

us aware of the fact that there is always a social relation—e.g., between producer and audience, or
between producer and other producers—involved in creative production online, even when these social
elements might not be readily apparent.

In many cases, however, the social and collaborative elements of online creativity are indeed
explicit, as the affordances of online environments often make collaboration easier, and open up novel
possibilities for collaborative relations and processes. The asynchronous nature of participation in online
creative platforms makes processes of collaboration and evaluation more efficient and convenient, as
Campbell et al. (2016) have found in looking at online fanfiction communities. Moreover, given the
increasing use of mobile devices for online participation, creators can engage with each other and their
audiences largely unrestrained by temporal or locative barriers, while the time required to retrieve
information or communicate with collaborators is greatly reduced. We say “largely” because, of course,
certain limitations and gaps in access and participation remain (Hargittai & Walejko, 2008; Jenkins et al.,
2006).

The social distribution of online creativity is also apparent in the link between combinatorial
creativity and online remix culture. Conceptual combination is often considered one of the most basic
creative processes (Ward, 2001), as it refers to the fact that, in creativity, existing elements (e.g., ideas,
types of knowledge, objects) are combined in order to generate new outcomes (e.g., a new idea that
integrates previous ones or moves them in a novel direction). This general process of creativity is certainly
present in the online world where creativity is quintessentially combinatorial; memes, remixes, and other
digitally native creative forms are powerful examples of this combinatorial nature. Indeed, one of the key
features of the online environment is the unprecedented number of elements available for creative action
(and reaction) and their relative availability. Many online spaces and tools are dedicated to enhancing the
combinatorial dynamic of creativity—fanfiction communities (Campbell et al., 2016; Curwood, Magnifico &
Lammers, 2013), specialized remix sites like CCMixter (Jarvenpaa & Lang, 2011), or tools like
memegenerator.com are clear examples—but even mainstream social media platforms like Twitter provide
support for combinatorial and participatory ethos (Seneviratne & Monroy-Hernández, 2010).

A last important dimension of social distribution concerns evaluation. While many new ideas are
potentially “creative,” they become so only when subjected to the views of others (Csikszentmihalyi,
1988). Creative participation in online spaces illustrates the social and collective nature of evaluation, as
well as its internal (and integral) rather than external role in the creative process. In view of their highly
participatory nature, online environments permit not only a distributed generation process but also
collective forms of evaluation or exploration. Frequently, these evaluative processes are embedded in the
technological design of online social spaces: For instance, the number of likes, upvotes, shares, or
comments a creative artifact receives, or the level of popularity a meme enjoys in online spaces, function
as indicators of value (Literat & van den Berg, 2017). However, these evaluation processes are often
collectively crafted through more conversational processes of vernacular criticism—as in Literat & van den
Berg’s (2017) study of the MemeEconomy community on Reddit, which appropriates stock-market lingo to
discuss the value of Internet memes.
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Table 1. The Social, Material and Temporal Distribution of Creative Action

and Its Expression in Online Spaces.

Creativity as
Principle of distributed
distributed Expression in online spaces
creativity
along a…

Social Creativity, even when enacted by - online environments bring the sociality of
dimension an individual acting alone, is a creative activity to the fore
fundamentally social practice - audiences play a crucial role in terms of
fueling and sustaining creative action

Creativity lends itself to - online participation makes collaboration

collaboration easier, and new forms of collaboration
possible
- combinatorial creativity thrives in online
environments

Evaluation is social too, and an - online creativity illustrates the social nature of
integral part of creativity evaluation
- online participants move seamlessly from
creator to evaluator and vice versa

Material Creativity has an important - online, there are multiplied and diversified
dimension material aspect places for creativity
- creative participation online is fundamentally
site-specific

The material support for - technological affordances, in combination with

creativity both facilitates and norms of participation, facilitate and constrain
constrains creative action creative action
- both social and technical factors shape the
intensity of creative engagement

Beyond the materiality of - online participation is commodified, and

creativity itself, the broader conditioned by technical protocols, ownership
context of creative action matters models, and business interests
- taking into account the political economy of
online creative spaces is crucial

Temporal At a micro level, creativity - online creativity tools provide crucial support
dimension depends on a succession of for nonlinear, iterative models of the creative
stages process
- however, the durability of online content and
platforms also matters

At a meso (ontogenetic) level, - creative activity is more integrated within

creativity is inscribed into the everyday life
life-trajectory of the individual - creators begin to produce and share online at
increasingly young ages

At a macro (sociogenetic) level, - online participatory practices have evolved

creativity depends on the significantly in the relatively short lifespan of
accumulation and transformation the Internet
of creative artifacts and - as technology evolves, so does the practice,
processes at the level of society and understandings of, creativity
International Journal of Communication 12(2018) Distributed Creativity on the Internet 899

Furthermore, it is important to note that in online participatory cultures, roles and responsibilities
are not clearly separated, and participants move seamlessly from creator to evaluator and vice versa,
demonstrating the strong social link between creative and evaluative processes. For instance, van Dijk
(2014) notes how participants in online interactive fiction communities fulfill both generative and
evaluative functions, being at once authors, critics, and audience members. Campbell et al. (2016) made
similar observations about fan fiction communities, suggesting that the processes of “distributed
mentorship” that characterize creative production in these spaces are unique to online communities.
Specifically, the authors note that seven key attributes—i.e., aggregation, accretion, acceleration,
abundance, availability, asynchronicity, and affect—distinguish these forms of feedback and evaluation
from traditional offline equivalents; all of these attributes have to do with sociality and communication.
Such forms of collective evaluation shape the creative process by making it open to the views of others
from early on, including during the process of making. Although, arguably, the possibility of peer feedback
and evaluation in online spaces might inhibit online creativity (especially if that feedback is negative),
empirical research suggests a largely positive relationship between evaluation and creative production, as
community feedback has been found to represent a strong motivator that attracts and sustains
participation (Campbell et al., 2016; Curwood, Magnifico & Lammers, 2013; Stern, 2008), again
highlighting the salience of social dimensions in regards to online creativity.

The Material Distribution of Online Creativity

Creativity is often studied by psychologists as a mental process rather an (equally) material and
embodied one. This, for example, is why the metaphor of the lightbulb is so commonly used to depict this
phenomenon: It designates the moment of creative insight or discovery. However, it says nothing about
what happens before or after this “moment” or how the sociomaterial context plays a part in instances of
what Wallas (1926) called illumination. A distributed view of creativity pays attention not only to the
materiality of creative action but to the medium that connects individuals and their creative products.

In this regard, physical and online mediums can be said to have quite distinct qualities. As a
locus of creativity, the Internet has a nebulous quality. While online spaces do have material culture, this
materiality is constantly questioned and often difficult to identify (Lehdonvirta, 2010). Indeed, as
Josephine Berry Slater asks, “where is an artwork when it’s on the Internet?” (Berry Slater et al., 2015, p.
415). Extrapolating to wider categories of online creativity, we might ask, where does a creative product
“live” on the Internet?

The material distribution of creative action does not imply that the outcomes of creativity
themselves need be material. Creativity, as a process, leads to the production of not only objects but first
and foremost new processes, events, and performances (Sawyer, 2011). However, creative action, both
offline and online, requires material support and depends on exploiting the multiple affordances of the
environment. The notion of affordance is crucial for unpacking material distribution. A concept stemming
from the ecological psychology of perception developed by Gibson (1986), affordances designate the
potentialities for action offered by the physical or virtual environment. The use of technology mediates
these potentialities but so, too, do interactions with other people who can point the user towards noticing
900 Ioana Literat and Vlad Petre Glaveanu International Journal of Communication 12(2018)

existing affordances or making better use of them; indeed, higher-level creativity is marked by the use of
existing affordances in a different or unusual way.

The products of online creativity are no less dependent on material support; although “virtual,”
their form is not abstract or acontextual. In this sense, it is important to remember that, in spite of the
sometimes messy circulation of creative works on the Internet—across sites, platforms, communities,
according to the unsystematic flows of sharing, forwarding, remixing, and so forth—creativity on the
Internet is very site-specific. In other words, online creative spaces have idiosyncratic norms, contexts,
ethoses, and—significantly—specific technical affordances that may enable, encourage, or constrain
particular types of creative participation (Baym, 2010; Papacharissi, 2010; van Dijck, 2013), or hybrid
uses born “out of the confrontation of users and technical systems” (Feenberg, 2008). Online creativity
does not unfold in an abstract space; it engages at all times with the specificity of online spaces and their
constraints in ways similar to how offline creators relate to the constraints of their material environment.

Moreover, it is crucial to acknowledge that not all creative participation in online spaces is the
same: The structure of the creative project or activity—both social and technical (see Literat, 2017)—
determines the degree or level of engagement. Online participation, including creative participation, is
often described in a very general manner and used as a blanket term, which does not allow for a complex
and incisive assessment of the participatory process (Jenkins & Carpentier, 2013; Kelty, 2012; van Dijck,
2009). Instead, Literat (2012) suggests a more nuanced model of understanding the various levels of
engagement, resting on a crucial distinction between executory participation (a task-based contribution to
a predesigned project) and structural participation (having an actual say in the conceptual design of the
project and exercising structural agency). Thus, when analyzing creative participation in online spaces, it
is imperative that scholars account for these distinctions and examine the structure of the project or
platform in terms of the kind(s) of participation it invites or, conversely, discourages.

Acknowledging the intrinsic materiality of online creativity also goes beyond the work setting and
looks towards the broader context of the creators and the society they live in. In this sense, it is crucial to
account for the political economy of online creative spaces as well. Scholars have been pointing to the
ways in which corporations and other commercial interests exercise control over online creative spaces
and thereby shape the types of creative action that can take place (Elder-Vass, 2016; Jenkins, 2006b;
Jenkins, Ford & Greene, 2013; van Dijck, 2013). As the Internet is becoming increasingly “platformized”
(Helmond, 2015), participation is commodified, and conditioned by technical protocols, ownership models,
and business interests (van Dijck, 2013). Writing on fandom and participatory cultures, Jenkins (2006a,
2006b) has drawn attention to the ways in which companies have tried to combat, punish, or misconstrue
grassroots participation, such as fans’ online creative activities. Although such efforts are incongruent with
the principles of participatory culture and, as Jenkins, Ford, and Greene (2013) argue, ultimately
unproductive in “a ‘spreadable media’ landscape,” they have often succeeded in limiting online creative
engagement on particular platforms and around particular cultural texts. Importantly, as Elder-Vass
(2016) notes, the “appropriative practices” of digital economies (such as YouTube, which Elder-Vass
employs as a case study) “significantly, systematically and more or less directly influence the allocation of
the benefits of production” (p. 102)—another reason why the political economy and larger commercial
dimensions of online creative participation are vital to consider vis-a-vis the loci of creative action.
International Journal of Communication 12(2018) Distributed Creativity on the Internet 901

The Temporal Distribution of Online Creativity

The sections above focused, in turn, on the sociality and materiality of distributed online
creativity. However, the particularities of online environments are also evident when it comes to the
temporality of creative action. Almost a century ago, at the beginning of research into (particularly
eminent) creativity, it was common to assume distinct phases of creative work, such as preparation,
incubation, illumination, and verification (Wallas, 1926). Later developments within creative cognition
complexified these early perspectives and emphasized the circularity and numerous overlaps between
phases and processes of creativity (Lubart, 2001). Online creativity and participation provide crucial
support for nonlinear, iterative models of the creative process.

Practices of distributed creativity in online spaces support these nonlinear approaches by showing
that the temporal dynamic of creating is defined by multiplicity, back-and-forth movements, and the
possibility to revisit and redefine one’s work. Online creative coding communities such as Scratch (Resnick
et al., 2009) or open source software communities (Lakhani & von Hippel, 2003; von Hippel, 2001), which
are built around iteration, debugging, and collaboration, are illustrative examples of this multiplicity and
nonlinearity. Of course, the question of permanence is crucial here as well, since online content is often
shifting or ephemeral. For instance, SalahEldeen and Nelson (2012) estimate based on their empirical
research that around 11% of content shared on social media will be lost after the first year, with a
projected loss of 0.02% per day after that. Online creative content also poses the challenge of
preservation, as its very existence and accessibility depends on a series of technical and infrastructural
protocols that change at an increasingly accelerated pace. For instance, many works of early Internet art
are now inaccessible (Tribe, Jana & Grosenick, 2006). The faster the technology develops, the shorter the
potential lifespan of digital creative content (Cornell & Halter, 2015), underscoring the significance of
recent initiatives like the Library of Congress’s web archiving project, which preserve GIFs, memes,
webcomics, and other creative online artifacts that might have been lost with the passage of time (Voon,
2017).

The examples above illustrate the temporal dynamics of creativity at a micro level, marked by
the continuous transformation and renewal of online material. However, the temporal distribution of
creative action needs to be understood at other levels as well, including the life trajectory of the person(s)
doing the creating (meso level) and the societal evolution of technology and participation (macro level).
When it comes to the former, the fact that we can engage in online participation at almost any time—
provided we have online access—further integrates creative activity into everyday life. Thus, in stark
contrast to the metaphor of the arts as a reservation (Gross, 1995), creativity today is not thought of as a
separate domain of activity or a special event. This blending might on the one hand make us less sensitive
to the creativity involved in online participation, and on the other, might resonate across other domains of
our personal and professional lives. Furthermore, as Jenkins and Bertozzi (2008) argue, this integration of
creativity into everyday life is particularly relevant in the case of youth, who make seamless connections
between creative action and other social and quotidian activities. And indeed, from an ontogenetic
perspective, another important particularity of online creativity is the fact that, aided by the accessibility
of digital tools and the appeal of online affinity networks, people begin to produce and distribute creative
material at increasingly young ages (Ito et al., forthcoming).
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In relation to the macrolevel temporal distribution of creativity—that is, societal expressions of

online creativity over time—we need to consider the rapid evolution of technology and its impact on
creative participation. In terms of both ethos and actual operation, the Internet has certainly evolved from
its early vision (Mayo & Newcomb, 2009) and continues to do so. Therefore, on a macro temporal level,
the increasing reliance on software for creative use will necessarily shape the concept of creativity over
time (McCormack & d’Inverno, 2012). For instance, as software evolves, can we or should we start
thinking about autonomous (or automated) creativity? Can we consider artificial intelligence as creative
(Dorin & Korb, 2012)? While these developments will certainly impact how we work creatively and
collaborate online, technology alone cannot determine either; indeed, applying the notion of distributed
creativity in online spaces emphasizes the fact that there are many other interconnected elements to
consider, and that creativity is shaped by—and within—these relationships, rather than by people or
technology taken separately. At the same time, looking ahead, both our practices of creating and our
understanding of creativity will continue to be shaped by macrolevel sociotechnological changes. Current
and future sociotechnological shifts will require a constant reassessment and redefinition of creativity, a
concept that itself has never been static, but repeatedly transformed by ongoing societal debates
(Hanchett Hanson, 2015). Arguably, this historical process will continue a rapprochement between
creativity and new media that could see the meaning of one depend on the meaning we give the other.

Conclusion

As Halter (2015) aptly notes, “the Internet has altered how we relate to ideas—how we discover
them, how we distribute them, how they circulate through society, how they are hidden or revealed” (p.
233). Acknowledging the significance of this new sociotechnological context, our aim in this article was to
marshal relevant tenets of creativity research in service of an examination of the particularities of online
creative participation. In the process, we also aimed to strengthen the insufficiently theorized connection
between creativity research and online participation. To do so, we applied the framework of distributed
creativity—which emphasizes the importance of context for creative action—in order to analyze the social,
material, and temporal distribution of online creativity and thereby achieve a more nuanced understanding
of online creative action across multiple interlocking dimensions. The key takeaway from this examination
is that, while all creativity is essentially distributed, online creativity is paradigmatic in this regard; thus,
by adopting a distributed framework and applying it to online contexts, we can not only reach new
understandings about online creativity but also shed new light on creative action as a whole.

To be sure, there are certain limitations when it comes to the very question of what is special or
different about online creativity, or the attempt to understand online creativity as a particular incarnation
of creative action. Asking the question in this manner presupposes, to an extent, that there is an objective
“nature” of creativity that varies across contexts. However, the epistemological underpinnings of
distributed creativity go against such a reifying ontology. Creativity is constituted not only by creative
practices (i.e., what creators do) but also by discourses about creativity (i.e., how creators and their
audiences construct representations about what is done). The construction of digital creativity, both in
science and lay representations, revolves around notions of collaboration, interaction, and co-creation.
This is a substantial shift in discourse compared to more traditional discourses of (nondigital) creativity,
which emphasize individuals and individual minds. In fact, it is precisely the emergence and growth of
International Journal of Communication 12(2018) Distributed Creativity on the Internet 903

digital technologies that contributed to new, systemic ways of thinking and talking about creativity (see
the transition between the “I” and “We” paradigms of creativity; Glăveanu, 2010). Following the social
constructivist logic that permeates our own investigation, it is also important to remember that practices
and discourses are not disconnected but feed into and constitute each other, just as there is a continuous
blending today between our online and offline activities. The way we think and talk about creativity is not
separate but integral to what we do, when we act creatively, and how.

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